[CentOS] Postfix mail server procedure

[John R Pierce]

On 11/08/11 10:10 PM, Jonathan Vomacka wrote:
> I was wondering if anyone had a good resource or procedure for a step by
> step in installing a mail server with Centos. There ARE documents on
> google, however almost all that i've found were outdated from 2005. Does
> anyone know where I can find this type of document for a mailserver
> Postfix + MySQL + SpamAssassin + ClamAV + Squirrelmail + Postfixadmin, etc?

http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Deployment_Guide/ch-Mail_Servers.html  
is as good a place to start as any.

not sure why mysql has to do with email servers....  yes, I know, you 
_can_ configure email servers to use SQL databases as the message 
stores, but I really don't think you _should_ do that, it just adds more 
overhead.

spamassassin has its own documentation, and frankly, its a big complex 
set of tools, there's no one 'right' way to set it up, as spam is a big 
complex problem.   each mail administrator will have to weigh the pros 
and cons of the various options and how acceptible they are to his 
environment.  docs are here, http://spamassassin.apache.org/doc.html

squirrelmail is not actually a mail server, its a web based mail 
reader.   its also not a standard part of the centos distribution.  see 
http://squirrelmail.org/

postfixadmin, I dunno, never used it.  I don't believe its supplied by 
CentOS, but its probably available from various third parties...  I 
manage my mail servers with shell tools.

you left out an important part of a mail server, which is a mail user 
agent such as dovecot or cyrus, these provide the POP and IMAP protocols 
that a user mail client such as Thunderbird need to read the mail.   the 
basics of setting these up should be covered in the redhat doc above.




-- 
john r pierce                            N 37, W 122
santa cruz ca                         mid-left coast